Following the success of the Tidal Flow exhibition of 2009, Medway Eyes returns to the Riverside Country Park in Gillingham in June with a new photographic exhibition that accentuates the unseen and provides a fresh take on the familiar.

Sight Unseen runs for three weeks and opens with a family friendly day of two halves; the exhibition opening and a picnic at the Riverside Country Park followed by live music at the Barge until teatime.

For our first birthday we asked our musical chums if they would like to contribute a track to a compilation album, our photography chums if they would like to contribute to an eZine and the rest of you if you wanted to come along to our birthday gig. After a big fat YES from lots and lots of people we ended up with a bumper 21 track album, a packed eZine and a happily crowded Nag’s Head on the 2nd October.

Thanks to The Lovedays, The Bresslaws and Didi Bergman for a great birthday gig.

The ME1 album is still available to download for free HERE, and don’t forget you can donate to Oxjam if you want to.

On 12th September 2009, some of the great musicians of Medway got together once again in aid of Oxjam. This time round the Thatcher Years got the Medway Eyes treatment as we celebrated British music from 1979 -1990.

Possibly its most important event this year, the Medway Eyes Photo Walk drew attention from far and wide. Due to coverage on the BBC, in The Independent, Amateur Photographer, the British Jounal of Photography, as well as local papers, Monaxle and Medway Eyes became momentarily famous for all the wrong reasons. Medway Eyes didn’t set itself up as a civil rights group, but found itself at the heart of a debate which has been snowballing since legislation was introduced allowing police officers to arrest anyone, for
any reason, under Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000.

Section 44 is one of the more controversial laws introduced during New Labour’s tenure; part of an avalanche of more than 3600 new criminal offences set to bury us all in bureaucracy and undermine our rights. Under Section 44, the police need not have any grounds for arrest at all. So, if you carry a camera, or a mobile phone, or a rucksack, or if you drive a van, or wear a beard, then watch your back, because that’s all it takes. Abandoning all common sense, it seems, the government has exercised extreme stupidity
in order to legislate against extreme stupidity. What’s it going to do next? Arrest itself?

Despite the events which inspired the photo walk, the day itself saw a hefty contingent of happy photographers descend on Medway from all over the place. A slideshow of what they saw can be seen on the Rights and Wrongs page on the Medway Eyes website.

Friday 3rd October 2008 saw the opening of the first Medway Eyes collaborative exhibition at the Brook Theatre Gallery in Chatham. The work involved in organising an exhibition is immense. When so many people are involved, the shortlisting alone can take forever. Before anything even makes it onto the walls there’s decision-making, printing, measuring, glass-cutting, framing, promotion, more measuring, headaches and, in the case of this exhibition, carpentry. Luckily, Jack Picknell had that covered.

Look At Medway featured the work of 19 local photographers. We were overwhelmed by the volume of traffic through the door on the opening night, and it and remains the most visited exhibition ever hosted at the Brook Theatre.

Special thanks to Ben Jones, Burn Paper Tigers and Groovy Uncle for playing cracking sets on the opening night too.